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Saturday, March 12, 2011

FAUX NOOZ CONTEMPLATING CANCELLING GLENN BECK

"Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the “Restoring Honor” rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox. True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic.[People finally waking up to this charlatan?]The erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.How could a breakup between Mr. Beck and Fox News — a bond that seemed made in pre-Apocalyptic heaven — come to pass? They were never great friends to start with: Mr. Beck came to Fox with a huge radio show and had been on CNN Headline News, so he did not owe his entire career to Fox and frequently went off-message. The sniping between Fox News executives and Mr. Beck’s team began soon after he went on the air in 2009.Many on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people” — have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network. Some 300 advertisers fled the show, leaving sponsorship to a slew of gold bullion marketers whose message dovetails nicely with Mr. Beck’s end-of-times gospel. Both parties go to some lengths to point out that that the discussion has nothing to do with persistent criticism from the left.The problem with “Glenn Beck” is that it has turned into a serial doomsday machine that’s a bummer to watch.[snip]What had been a fast and loose assault on all things liberal has grown darker and less entertaining, especially with the growing revolution in the Middle East, a phenomenon Mr. Beck sees as something of a beginning to some kind of end.

[snip]“He used to be a lot funnier,” said David Von Drehle, who wrote the article in Timemagazine. “He was the befuddled everyman and something entirely new, but the longer people have listened to his ranting and raving, the wearier they become. Now you are just getting down to diehards. I mean, how many people were in the Waco compound at the end? A couple of hundred?”

[snip]

For months now Glenn Beck’s rating have been on the decline. Many Americans see him as an extremist pushing his own political agenda more than a news commentator, and now a source has told The New York Times that Fox News has considered not renewing his contract when it expires this year."Let us all fervently hope this comes to pass, and that this self-proclaimed "rodeo clown" and "recovering dirt bag" finds another venue for his idiotic conspiracy blatherings--a soapbox in the middle of "Crazy Town."

17 comments:

There is a curious relationship between earthquake news from Japan yesterday and the timing of this post.

Fox News news preempted The Glenn Beck Show to broadcast extended coverage of news from Japan. It may mean more preemptions of Beck in the future as a graceful way to remove a growing liability while saving face. In other words, Beck may fade into obscurity -unnoticed - with little or no negative impact on Fox. Plausible?

i think the best thing for the moderate left would be to leave old glenn on the air. take him off the air and people might forget what an arsehole he was and fox would probably replace him with a more effective voice of the right. or not.

Rational Nation - “While all the progressives have been busy obsessing over Mr. Beck's entertainment side show serious conservatives and Libertarians have put Mr. Beck on "ignore" quite some time ago.”

Your sarcastic crack motivated by “sand-in-your-face” identity politics is frankly OFFENSIVE because what you think of as “entertainment” is defamation, harassment, and public incitement that has caused pain and suffering to others. Here are the bare facts: